“Whoa there,” Nick said, wrapping his arms around her waist.
It felt surreal. Zoya had lived a stoic Russian life. Grew up on a farm. Kept her eyes on the ground so that she didn’t wander off in daydreams. Everything she had, she had from sacrifice and work.
But this man made her feel… No. Just no. Men came and men went. You could never rely upon them. Her mother and grandmother had beaten that into her as a girl.
She pushed away from Nick, steadying herself against the wall. “I am alright.”
“Okay, okay,” Nick said, backing away. “I’m going to check on Nami.”
The floating room swayed back and forth as waves knocked it around a bit. Normally Zoya never got seasick, but the combination of the explosion then this motion was threatening to turn her stomach.
Her old comrade Pietrov came over. “Are you alright?”
Zoya nodded slowly. “I will be,” she said. It would be considered politically incorrect in American terms, but Zoya was glad that out of all her comrades it had been Pietrov to survive. He had always been the kindest to her. A source of cold comfort on this blasted station.
She barely knew the others that had survived on the lower level. They were not officers. She believed they worked in the kitchens. The older man was unknown to her. He didn’t even look vaguely familiar.
He rocked in the corner muttering nonsense. After everything they had been through, Zoya was surprised they weren’t all in the same condition.
Then she heard a few of the words he was speaking. FSB and Putin and the Ultimatum. Her heart froze mid-beat.
Someone had betrayed them. Someone had killed many of their rank, then enlisted the sharks to kill off the rest of the station’s personnel. The man who had rigged the shark pens. The man who had set into motion the Megalodon’s escape.
The man who had ruined everything.
* * *
“Nick,” he heard his name whispered. Why would someone whisper his name?
He glanced around to find Zoya tilting her head toward the back of the room. What was going on?
He hugged Nami one last time. “I’ll be right back.”
“Sure,” his daughter said, going back to fawning over the dog. Just like her horses, he kind of came in second.
Nick rose and went over to Zoya. “What’s up?”
She frowned before she spoke. Even after that, she hesitated.
“Talk to me,” Nick encouraged.
Her frowned deepened. “I am concerned that…”
“That?” Nick prompted. These Russians were hard nuts to crack, man.
“I think that man over there might be the traitor among my people. The man that put all this destruction into motion.”
Now he could see why she was so hesitant. That was a whopping big accusation. Zoya waved the only other male Russian survivor over. Nick thought the guy’s name was Pietrov. He seemed to be an old friend of hers.
Once the old man was far enough away, Zoya jut her jaw out to the murmuring man. “He spoke of Ultimatum.”
Pietrov’s eyes dilated. “Here?”
Zoya nodded gravely.
“I’m sorry, I don’t understand,” Nick admitted
With a frown, Zoya explained. ‘They are an extremist group violently opposed to Putin. They are responsible for Ninyu, Moscoff, and Lurnish.”
“Still sorry,” Nick admitted. “I have no idea what or who any of those are.”
Zoya sighed. “The Ultimatum was responsible for getting Pussy Riot out of jail.”
Okay that Nick got. “Why would they sabotage this station though?”
She lifted her hands to indicate the entire station. “This is a Putin vanity project. A top secret one. If and when it got out, there would be international uproar and an embarrassment to Putin.”
“But those people were slaughtered,” Nick said. “I get monkey-wrenching, sort of, but wanton slaughter?”
Zoya shrugged. “Their villainy knows no bounds. They are responsible for over a thousand deaths already, what are a few dozen more here?”
Okay, that was not what you wanted to hear just after it appeared you’d finally stabilized a section of the station.
* * *
Nami watched as the adults discussed something, their heads down, eyes darting. Clearly it was one of those “adult” conversations that was far too rarified to loop Dillon or her into. When would the adults ever learn?
“All the numbers look good,” Tonaka stated. “We should be able to stay afloat for days if not a week.”
The doctor was good, Nami had to give him that.
The screen on the QX panned the outside of their little abode. The rest of the station was floating down into the depths. All the gates were down. The sharks were free. Hopefully they would swim off and leave little old them alone.
“So what is next?” Nami asked, still watching the adult’s conversation out of the corner of her eye.
Callum stepped forward. “I think Dillon, Quax and I should go out and look to see if Nassar made it out and help them in if possible.”
Dillon, of course, nodded vigorously. “They could have survived the explosion if they were in the right part of station. And Lopez was right, there is a lot of floating flotsam. Enough for survivors to hide in.”
Nami hated to admit it, but it was a good plan. That didn’t mean she wasn’t concerned though. “You’re going to be careful, right?”
“When am I not?” Dillon replied.
Nami cocked her head and punched her boyfriend in the arm. “All the freaking time.”
He leaned over and gave her a kiss on the cheek. “Then you should be used to it.”
That she was.
Callum called her father over. “Nick, want in on this?”
Her father put up a hand to indicate to wait for a moment. Callum looked to Tonaka, his eyebrow going up. It was unlike her father to put Callum on hold.
“This should be interesting,” Callum said.
The adults finished their conversation, all of them nodding before her father came over.
“Sorry about that,” Nick said, “But we’ve got a situation.”
Given her father’s grave face, maybe Nami didn’t want in on this particular “adult” conversation.
* * *
Callum frowned as Nick glanced around the room. It wasn’t like Nick to be so worried. “Such as?”
“Such as we think the station’s saboteur might be in this room.”
That was news to him. Callum had just assumed that whoever had committed these crimes was long gone.
“What makes you say that?” Tonaka asked.
Nick indicated to Zoya. “She heard that man mumbling about a radical anti-Putin organization.”
Callum scrutinized the elderly man who rocked back and forth, his lips moving in frantic whispers. “He doesn’t look like he could orchestrate, let alone execute, a massive attack like this.”
“They say he wasn’t this way before the attack. See the blood at his hairline, Zoya thinks he may have been injured in the aftermath and has brain damage.”
“Then doesn’t that make him kind of inert?” Nami asked. She was a smart one, that one.
Her father frowned. “He might not still possess the mental faculties, however, look at his clothing. He might have a weapon or explosives under there.”
Callum studied the older man. He certainly seemed altered. That was for sure. He found himself missing Shalie intently. Her study of the human brain and behaviors would be invaluable right about now. She knew as much about brain physiology as most brain injury experts. It was her job to try and create a robot that overcame human frailty.
“Let’s go see,” Callum said, heading over to the man.
“And what if he is rigged to blow?” Nick said, catching Callum’s only arm.
“Best to find out now,” Callum stated. “Before one of our only two QXs is gone, right?”
Nick frowned, looking over to Zoya. He jerked his head, calling
her over.
“What?” she asked.
“Callum wants to confront the old man.”
“No,” Zoya said with a fierce shake of her head. “He is Russian problem. We take care of him.”
“Zoya,” Nick said. “He is all of our problem and best to deal with it now than later.”
“We have a plan. Pietrov will get close to him. He knows him. He will root out whether we should be concerned or not.”
Callum shrugged. “If we are going to have any chance of rescuing Nassar and his men, I’ve got to go soon…”
Nick shrugged. “Get out of here. We’ll handle this.”
Callum smiled, reaching his hand out to Nick. “Try to have a place for us to come back to.”
Nick pumped Callum’s hand. “What could go wrong?”
* * *
Dillon double-checked his equipment before heading out the hatch with his father. They were on the far end of the floating section. He was amazed at how well Tonaka had surgically cut the section off from the rest of the station. It wasn’t large mind you, but that was kind of the point. They wanted it large enough to shelter the dozen or so survivors but small enough to easily keep afloat.
So far, that was exactly what Tonaka had provided.
“How you doing, buddy?” Dillon asked Quax.
The robot shrugged. It was pretty darned amazing how well Shalie programmed Quax’s more subtle emotional cues.
“Wishing I were in Tahiti while not drinking or sun burning.”
Dillon patted his friend on the back. “I hear ya. But I’ve got a good feeling about this.”
“You always have a good feeling,” Quax replied, returning the gesture.
Clearly Quax had no idea what Dillon had gone through after Salechii. Quax had been gone. His father speaking Russian. That had not been a good era for Dillon. If it hadn’t been for Nami’s steady love, he didn’t know what could have happened.
But now, now he really did have a good feeling. “Lopez has kept them safe.”
“Or at the least gotten them into the Guinness Record Book.”
Dillon chuckled as he checked his oxygen gauge again. He was full, plus they were bringing three extra tanks. The soldiers were probably running low by now.
“Dad, you ready?”
His father nodded, adjusting his regulator.
“You can talk now, dad, remember?”
A smile spread across his father’s face. He was speaking English again. “Sorry, right. Yes, I am ready to go.”
Dillon shoved off with his father, heading out into what looked like open water.
“Down there,” Quax stated, indicating to a beam that still held a portion of the station close by.
“As good a place as any,” his father said, heading for the mangled metal.
* * *
“Seriously?” Lopez stated. “Where is a saddled shark when you need one?”
“I told you to spare your oxygen,” Nassar hissed, realizing that he had just wasted some of his own to rebuke Lopez, but at some point you just had to smack him down.
Lopez frowned, but didn’t retort. Ajax swam to Nassar’s left, remaining silent, being the good SEAL and conserving his tank.
They had kept to the building, trying to stay out of the way of any lingering shark. They had followed several metal struts up, but hadn’t found a path to the surface yet. And after a near miss with a Greenland shark, they had retreated to the wreckage of the station.
“Down to ten minutes worth,” Ajax reported.
“We have to strike for the surface,” Lopez stated for like the tenth time. “Take our chances there. At least there’s oxygen up there.”
And sharks. Lots of sharks still.
So the question became…would you rather die of suffocation or of being eaten headfirst?
Oddly being eaten did sound quicker and better than the former.
Lopez seemed to sense his decision and shrugged. “At least we will be adding to the ecosystem.”
Cold comfort there.
Nassar took in a few more breaths. The air was starting to smell stale. That bottom of the tank smell. Hanging around down here for ten more minutes didn’t sound all that safe anymore.
“We go up, but stay to the structure until we have to leave it.”
Both of his men nodded.
They made their way out of the tangled metal and held onto the outer edge.
“Is that light?” Ajax asked.
In the distance it certainly looked like it. And the only place that might still have power was the rendezvous section.
He didn’t waste any breath, he simply put a foot on the metal and shoved, pushing himself into the abyss. It was a ways away, but the only way to get there was across open water.
It felt strange and a little welcome to leave the wreckage. It felt like only death lived there now.
The three of them swam in a single line. Lopez, of course was in the front, Nassar next and Ajax bringing up the rear. He was certain they looked for all the world like a great buffet to any shark that had hung around for the left-overs.
‘Bingo!” Lopez announced as the floating part of the station came into view. It wasn’t all that far.
Just a few hundred feet. These Arctic waters were as clear as glass.
Their salvation was within sight.
“Six o’clock,” Ajax warned.
“Twelve o’clock,” Lopez warned.
Two sharks then, incoming. One looked like a fat leopard shark and the other a relatively small Great White. Still it was large enough to take them all out in a single pass.
It was looking like oxygen wasn’t going to be a worry any longer.
CHAPTER 22
Shalie watched the feed in horror. She was half a world away and couldn’t stop the sharks as they circled the SEALs. She had been monitoring the situation from the various QXs feeds that ran right into her computer.
She had also tapped into the shark cam feeds as well. Most had left once the gates were down, but a few like these two had sensed there was prey still around. She’d hung out with Callum long enough to know a hunting pattern when she saw it.
Clearly these sharks had come into contact with humans before. They had scars on their snouts. They knew that humans could deliver punishment. So they warily circled the men, tightening the circumference with each pass.
If nothing changed, soon the sharks would come in for the kill. About the only thing going for the soldiers was that the sharks seemed as wary of each other as they were the men, keeping their distance.
Shalie had a hundred QXs in the next room but could do nothing with them. Her fists balled up in frustration. She should have gone, but realistically what would that have accomplished? What could she have done to help any more than she was sitting here?
Still, there had to be something. She had the coordinates to the soldiers but with no uplink, she couldn’t share that with Callum and the others. She had desperately tried to establish connection with Quax, but Tonaka’s encryption was too tough. She had only broken into the video stream, not the CPUs.
The Russian code was far easier to break. She had two-way communication with the shark’s camera. She could move the lenses, zoom in and zoom out.
Wait. That was it, wasn’t it?
A way to alert the others to the soldier’s location.
She typed in a string of code, taking over the Great White’s camera.
The flash on the camera came out, sending as beam of light that cut through the water. Even though Callum might see that, he might not know the importance of the source was.
So instead, she set the light to strobe.
Now that should attract a rescue.
* * *
Dillon saw the flashing light and pointed. “Look, dad, that’s got to be them!”
“And they’ve got to be in trouble if they are using light like that. It’s dangerous.”
“Why?” Dillon asked. He was usually pretty well versed in the ecosystem b
ut this Arctic Ocean had him thrown for a loop. Life was so different in the Arctic Circle.
“Squid are attracted by light. Giant squid.”
Dillon gulped that didn’t sound so good.
So that was why his father had put a nix on using their flashlights to search. His father had known how dangerous that could become.
Dillon was used to tropical squid that usually got about a foot long and for the most part were friendly, benign creatures. But Dillon had heard the tales of the giant squid. Twenty feet long. Able to eat dolphins in a gulp.
For the thousandth time, Dillon wished they had long-range communications. This stupid jamming was really crimping his style. Sometimes he could barely hear his father and they were like three feet away.
None of that mattered right now though. They had some SEALs to save.
“So we better go get them,” Dillon said, climbing on the back of Quax. The time for careful, slow swimming a grid was over. Time to use the turbo boosters.
“Dad, climb on,” Dillon urged. He could see his Dad hesitate. He was always reluctant to use Quax to his full extent. “Come on, we’ve got to go. Swallow your pride and climb on.”
With a sigh that lifted his father’s broad shoulders up and down, he finally climbed on.
“High ho, Silver!” Dillon yelled. “Away!”
Quax turned on the turbo jets and they were out of there in a flash.
But would they be in time?
* * *
Nassar and his men clumped tightly together. How much that would help when the real attack came, he wasn’t sure.
But it was procedure, so they followed it.
“Lesson for the day?” Lopez stated. “Even if you get bored don’t let the shark with a saddle go.”
Yes, right, because that was the lesson for the day.
The Great White came in tight, bumping them with its pectoral fin. They had nothing to defend themselves with.
Lopez, though, always the reckless one, unstrapped his oxygen tank from his back. “Here, sharky, sharky, sharky.”
The Great White came in for another nudge, but this time Lopez was ready. The corporal cocked back and swung his oxygen tank. Not sideways toward the snout as you would think, but down, onto its left pectoral fin, tipping the shark off balance.
Seeming a little panicked, the shark swam off in a rush, nearly hitting the leopard shark. The two snapped at one another but swam apart uninjured. For its size the Great White was young, not as versed at hunting as its older counterparts.
Apex Predator Thriller Series Collection (Including the blockbuster new shark park thriller, Salechii) Page 49
